Art History BVA312 Contemporary African Art 7/11/19

Art History BVA312 Contemporary African Art 7/11/19

Ghana - East Africa

http://www.ghanamuseums.org/news.php


Ghana museums

Paa Joe and Elisabeth Efua have curated a wonderful installation - I love the objects scale and use of space - their is narrative and humor in the work.











Currently on view at Gallery 1957: works by Ghanaian artists Paa Joe and Elisabeth Efua Sutherland, as part of the 'One does not take it anywhere' exhibition.

NII ODZENMA
source:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/declaneytan/2018/01/17/how-an-accra-based-art-gallery-is-bringing-ghanaian-contemporary-art-to-the-global-stage/#1ec70a65e4a2


Ibrahim Mahama

Born 1987   - lives and works in  Ghana

Mahama is a contemporary artist of interest with his use of the found object  and installation work - collections of everyday things. 

I enjoy seeing other cultures exhibiting using old boxes and cases - the installations are at a large scale and beyond anyting I would be interested in doing - i prefer the smaller scale

https://kuulpeeps.com/2018/06/ghana-to-the-world-5-contemporary-artists-who-are-making-it-big-around-the-world/






Mahama obtained a Masters in Fine Art in Painting and Sculpture in 2013 and a Bachelors in Fine Art in Painting in 2010 at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana.
His work was shown during the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in Italy themed ‘All The World’s’ Futures curated by Okwui Enwezor in 2015.





His solo shows includes: Material Effects, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, Michigan, USA (2015) and Civil Occupation, Ellis King, Dublin (2014); Factory machines and trucks, Kumasi, Ghana (2013) and Cannon Wax, Jamestown, Accra, Ghana (2013).





An installation on the National Theater


Mahama has exhibited in various locations in and around Kumasi and Accra as well as at the KNUST Museum in Kumasi. Other recent shows include: Edson Chagas / Ibrahim Mahama, Apalazzo Gallery, Brescia, Italy (2015); Broken English, Tyburn Gallery, London, UK (2015); Pangaea II New Art from Africa and Latin America, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2015); Material Effects, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum Michigan State University, Michigan, USA (2015) and Silence between the Lines: Anagrams of emancipated Futures, K.N.U.S.T, Jackson, Contemporary Art Centre, Ghana (2015).





Ibrahim Mahama, Non-Orientable Nkansa II, 2017, installation view, 2018, Apalazzo Gallery, Brescia. Exchanged shoemaker boxes, construction boards, old train parts, mix media. Courtesy: the artist and Apalazzo Gallery, Brescia; photograph: Delfino Sisto Legnani/ Marco Cappelletti











Now, meet the Satirical artist Bright Teeth Ackwerh


Bright Tetteh Ackwerh is a Ghanaian satirical artist who employs the domains of popular art, street art, painting, and illustration to voice and documents his persuasions. He has exhibited widely in Ghana and West Africa, building a niche as an emerging contemporary Ghanaian artist on the West African art scene. In 2016, he won the Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Ghanaian Art (the ‘Prize’) at the colourful event held at the ringway estates in Accra


Serge Attukwei Clottey (b. 1985) is known for work that examines the powerful agency of everyday objects. Working across installation, performance, photography and sculpture, Clottey explores personal and political narratives rooted in histories of trade and migration. Based in Accra and working internationally, Clottey refers to his work as “Afrogallonism”, a concept that confronts the question of material culture through the utilisation of yellow gallon containers. Cutting, drilling, stitching and melting found materials, Clottey’s sculptural installations are bold assemblages that act as a means of inquiry into the languages of form and abstraction.





In his most recent series of wall pieces, he utilises flattened Kuffuor gallon, jute sacks, discarded car tires and wood pieces to form abstract formations onto which he inscribes patterns and text. In doing so, the artist elevates the material into a powerful symbol of Ghana’s informal economic system of trade and re-use. While some surfaces resemble local textile traditions such as ‘Kente’, a key reference in west African Modernism throughout the 20th century, others refer to barcodes and feature Chinese characters in reference to the emergence of new power structures in Ghana. In Clottey’s drawings (Sex and Politics Series, 2016 – ongoing) the artist explores a formalist approach, depicting disjointed figures and faces, not unlike the visions of nude women under Cubism, a European movement which drew heavily from traditional African tribal sculpture.





Installation work is interesting - using found objects seems to be universal in contemporary art.

EL ANATSUI


El Anatsui (born 1944) is a Ghanaian sculptor active for much of his career in Nigeria. He has drawn particular international attention for his iconic “bottle-top installations”, distinctive large-scale assemblages of thousands of pieces of aluminium sourced from alcohol recycling stations and sewn together with copper wire, transformed into metallic cloth-like wall sculptures in a way that can “draw connections between consumption, waste, and the environment





El Anatsui has exhibited his work around the world, including at the October Gallery, London (2016), Brooklyn Museum (2013), the Clark Art Institute (2011), Rice University Art Gallery, Houston (2010), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2008–09); National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. (2008); Fowler Museum at UCLA (2007); Venice Biennale (2007); Hayward Gallery (2005); Liverpool Biennial (2002); the National Museum of African Art (2001); the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (2001); the 8th Osaka Sculpture Triennale (1995); the 5th Gwangju Biennale (2004); and the Venice Biennale (1990).





A retrospective of his work, entitled ‘When I Last Wrote to You About Africa’, was organized by the Museum for African Art and opened at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in October 2010. It toured venues in the United States for three years, concluding at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.





A major exhibition of recent works, entitled Gravity & Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui, had its New York premiere at the Brooklyn Museum in February 2013. Organized by the Akron Art Museum (exhibition: 2012), the exhibition later travelled to the Des Moines Art Center (2013–14) and the Bass Museum of Art in Miami (2014)





Hope this inspires you to take art to the next levelAnne Hegerty is So Skinny Now and Looks Gorgeous! (Photos)